Tag: history

Uncategorized1 Comment

Mushroom murderer

rrn69

Three renowned writers of true crime Helen Garner (greatest contemporary writer), Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein (legal expert) tracked Erin Patterson’s preminary hearings and trial, joined the media scrum at the Latrobe Valley Law Courts, slept over in Morwell, a town east of Melbourne, and close to Leongatha, where the deadly dish was served, and spent unlimited hours in fervent discussion of the case and the themes it raises: Love, Hate, Jealousy, Revenge, Marriage, Money, Mycology and Murder. The writers explore the gap between the certainties of the law and the messiness of reality, their own ambivalence about the true … Continue reading Mushroom murderer

Uncategorized1 Comment

Ruthless exploitation of technology, people and the colonies

rrn69

Ruthless is a revelation of Britain’s industrial revolution the result of its machines, which produced goods with miraculous efficiency and exploitation that enabled it. Was it the country’s natural abundance, which provided coal for its engines, ones for its furnaces and food for its labourers? Or was it Britain’s colonies, where a brutalised enslaved workforce produced cotton for its factories? Historian Edmond Smith reveals how the world’s first industrial nation was founded on the ruthless exploitation of technology, people and the planet. This economic system linked the plantations of the Caribbean with the colossal cotton mills of northern England, applied … Continue reading Ruthless exploitation of technology, people and the colonies

Uncategorized1 Comment

Amur Tigers

rrn69

In the forests of northeast Asia home to fish owls, brown bears, musk deer, moose, wolves, raccoon dogs, leopards and tigers, and by the end of Cold War, only a few hundred tigers stepped quietly through the snow of the Amur Rive basin. Soon, the Soviet Union fell, bringing catastrophe, without the careful oversight of a central authority, poaching and logging took a fast, astonishing toll on an already vulnerable species Amur Tiger. Slaght in his book Tigers Between Empires, dealing with the isolated population inhabiting the Amur  basin in Siberia, parts of the river separate inland China from Russia’s eastern … Continue reading Amur Tigers

Uncategorized1 Comment

Restoration or Erasure: Old ways are erased by the new

rrn69

The Palace of the Republic, that once housed the East German Parliament, is demolished. A grandmother’s laughter passes from life into memory and the furniture that once made a home is taken to the tip. A friendship drops into silence. Old ways are erased by the new  In this fascinating collection of essays, most of them written for her column in the Frankfurter  Allgemeine Zeitung, Winner of the International Booker Prize Jenny Erpenbeck meditates, with a sense of both deep melancholy and wry humour, on the disappearance and impermanence of things. Recalling the shop that used to darn tights in the … Continue reading Restoration or Erasure: Old ways are erased by the new

Uncategorized1 Comment

Misrepresented women’s role in global economics

rrn69

Female entrepreneurs, economic revolutionaries who defied the women’s roles as producers and reproducers and the sense that things might have different if homo economicus, had been joined by femina ecobomics. In ancient Athens, did you know about Phryne, the richest woman who offered to pay to rebuild the walls of Thebes after the city was razed by Alexander the Great, or in Georgian England, Priscilla Wakefield, the writer and entrepreneur, set up the first English “penny bank” to help women on low incomes to save money and children to save from an early age ? What about the everyday woman … Continue reading Misrepresented women’s role in global economics

Uncategorized1 Comment

Debates in Congress and the Supreme Court about executive power

rrn69

In The Pursuit of Liberty, bestselling author, Jeffrey Rosen, president of the National Constitution Centre, explores how the opposing constitutional visions of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton have defined America for 250 years, influenced presidents from Washington to Trump, how to balance liberty and power, and continue to drive the debate over the power of government. While Hamilton pushed for a strong Federal Government and a powerful executive. This ongoing tug-of-war has shaped all the pivotal moments in American history, including Abraham Lincoln’s fight against slavery and southern secession, the expansion of federal power under Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, and … Continue reading Debates in Congress and the Supreme Court about executive power

Uncategorized1 Comment

Instruments of Wealth extraction which aids the spread of autocracy

rrn69

“The magic of Tim Wu’s The Age of Extraction is its simplicity, and breaks down one of the greatest challenges of our age- the unaccountable power of tech platforms, explaining your online life is draining your wallet. Our world is dominated by a handful of tech platforms, who provide great conveniences and entertainment, but also stand as some of the most effective instruments of wealth extraction ever invented, seizing immense amount of money, data, and attention from all of us. An economy driven by digital platforms and AI influence offers the potential to enrich us, and also threatens to marginalize … Continue reading Instruments of Wealth extraction which aids the spread of autocracy

Uncategorized1 Comment

Law and justice system might touch our lives

rrn69

British Law and justice system might touch our lives when we have an accident, a wrong is done to us, or we have a family difficulty. They are vast, ancient and cover everything from the personal to the regulation of our government. But to most of us, they are a wen of intimidating institutions and practices. Baroness Hale, after spending a decade writing about England’s justice system, shows us how the law is on our side, by taking us into the complexities of real courts and real decisions, we see that we all have rights: schoolchildren, disabled people, workers, minorities … Continue reading Law and justice system might touch our lives

Uncategorized1 Comment

The Age of the Bomb: Fear of Annihilation

rrn69

America was responsible for the existence of nuclear age with the explosion of the first atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert on July 16, 1945. The inauguration of this new era was epitomized by the bomb’s principal creator, J. Robert Oppenheimer, quoting the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” Since then, the era of atom has become the age of the bomb? or two bombs, Atomic and Hydrogen. Three weeks latercame the US nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and with them ending of the second world war, triggering the cold war transforming the … Continue reading The Age of the Bomb: Fear of Annihilation

Uncategorized1 Comment

Consequences of making poor decisions affecting billions

rrn69

Presidents turning into monarchs. Tech tycoons and autocrats intent on global regime change. Armies of cyber trolls. The old order is at an end. The Hour of the Predator has come. Former political adviserGiuliano da Empoli takes us on an insider’s journey through this new reality, from the Glass Palace of the UN to the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton, from top secret meetings to violent power struggles. We encounter dictators and tryants, strongmen and AI billionaires – geopolitical predators, and the flailing leaders whop desperately try to appease them. In the age of the Borgias or the conquistadors, cynical scheming and brute … Continue reading Consequences of making poor decisions affecting billions